Droevendaalsesteeg 10
6708 PB Wageningen
The Netherlands
Social
About
I focus on open science and meta-research in ecology. Why? Because I strive to enable ecologist to do the best possible science with the highest impact on nature and society. Why? Cos we really need this! I also play piano & advocate for equity.
Biography
I am a senior scientist at the Ruder Boskovic Institute (Zagreb, Croatia) and an honorary fellow at NIOO-KNAW. I am also a steering board member of the European Open Science Cloud, sub-group on policy.
My expertise covers the evolutionary ecology of bonding, life-history trade-offs, evidence synthesis, and data and code standards. I strive to apply my knowledge of different modelling approaches and Open Science to study and optimize the scientific process itself (using approach called meta-science). In this way, we can enable ecological research to reach its full potential.
My Open Science journey has started in 2015, and it continues. As a part of my efforts, I have co-founded SPI-Birds Network and Database (for FAIR data and codes, https://spibirds.org/en) and Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology (SORTEE https://www.sortee.org/). I am also participating in other open science initiatives, such as RDA, GoFAIR discovery IN, UNESCO Open Science, Open Knowledge Maps, and FIARsFAIR.
As a sole carer of a toddler, I have been experiencing many obstacles in managing my scientific career. I hope being vocal about this can help change the current evaluation, expectation, and promotion systems in science, and encourage practices that accommodate those in less common life situations.
Get in touch if you have any questions about my work, ideas for collaborative projects, or if you think your group would benefit from a workshop on open practices, meta-science, or meta-analysis.
Research groups
CV
Employment
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2022–PresentSenior Research Fellow, Ruder Boskovic Institute, Croatia
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2022–PresentHonorary Fellow, NIOO-KNAW
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2018–2022Veni Research Fellow, NIOO-KNAW
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2016–2018Postdoc, NIOO-KNAW
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2015–2016Postdoc, University of Oxford
Education
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2010–2014DPhil in Zoology, University of Oxford, UK
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2003–2008BSc & MSc in Ecology, University of Zagreb
Grants
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2018Veni Individual Fellowship
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2022NLBIF Grant
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2021Lorentz Center Workshop Grant
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2020Dutch Data Prize and Open Science Use Case Award
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2017NWO Scientific Meetings Grant
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2017RDA EU Early Career support Programme
Editorial board memberships
2021–Present
Journal of Animal Ecology
PhD students
2021–Present
Marija Purgar
Invited talks and keynote addresses on symposia and conferences
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2023EOSC Tripartite event, DEI 2023 Conference
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20237th Faculty of Science PhD Student Symposium
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2022Open Science Fund day
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2021AIMOS (Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-research and Open science) Conference
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2021Software Management Plans
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2021Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution Annual meeting 2021
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2021FAIRsFAIR National Roadshow
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2020Better Research Through Better Data
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2020National Open Science Festival
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2019Wildlife Research & Conservation 2019
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2017Open Science Fair
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2014International Conference on Evolution and Behaviour
Publications
Key publications
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Trading up: the fitness consequences of divorce in monogamous birds
Projects & collaborations
Projects
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SPI-Birds Network and Database
SPI-Birds Network and Database (www.spibirds.org) is a centralized and community-driven initiative that connects researchers working on wild bird populations in which individuals are uniquely marked and recognized. SPI-Birds makes research groups and their datasets visible, provides systematic data archiving, ensures data quality and integrity, and facilitates data sharing and comparative, cross-dataset analyses. For this purpose, we have developed a data standard and series of data quality checks agreed upon by the community, which adhere to the FAIR principles.
Additional Projects
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Reducing research waste in ecology
2021–PresentResearch waste is all research with no or limited information value. We estimated that research waste in Ecology is between 82%-89% of research. Research waste accumulates over the research lifecycle: much of the work is never published, studies are badly designed and their results cannot be trusted, and published studies do not report their results completely. We are now working on solutions to research waste. These include open science practices, but also other principles, such as the involvement of trained statisticians in science. For this, we are engaging with a range of stakeholders, as solutions to the research waste will work only if all the actors of the research ecosystem are involved (researchers, publishers, funders...).
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Availability of software code in ecology
2020–PresentSoftware code is an essential research component. It allows others to understand the work, reproduce its results, and use it in their own research. In this project, we first evaluated the reproducibility of published studies in ecology, which is very low (see Low availability of code in ecology: A call for urgent action | PLOS Biology). We now work on understanding how journal policies influence the availability of code. We also work on quantifying the extent of the importance of code for analytical reproducibility in ecology.
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Pair-bonds beyond breeding season – a new approach to understanding divorce and fidelity using the power of Open Data;
2018–2021The project has established a novel approach to understanding pair bonding. The approach has major implications for how we study ecological and evolutionary processes as pair-bonds are essential for reproduction in most animals. More here https://www.nwo.nl/en/projects/016veni181054
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Meta-analysis and open science
2016–2017In this project, we have studied how open science can reduce some of the problems that meta-analysis in ecology faces. We have also produced tools and guidelines for ecologists to navigate the open data landscape in ecology (see Navigating the unfolding open data landscape in ecology and evolution | Nature Ecology & Evolution), and to use open data in meta-analysis (see How to do meta-analysis of open datasets | Nature Ecology & Evolution).
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Long-term individual data on birds as a source of biodiversity information
2022–2023NLBIF grants (Netherlands Biodiversity Information Facility) to work on data and meta-data standards, and link SPI-Birds Network and Database to GBIF.
Outreach
In my outreach I focus on communicating:
1) my work to the general public
2) struggles and wins of an everyday scientists. Science must be more inclusive, and I hope my story can show that you do not have to work long hours, nor weekends, not do you have to over-publish to be a good (and happy) scientist!
On my work & some advice
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02329-x
Featured in
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SPI-Birds Network & Database
SPI-Birds Network & Database, or the Studies of Populations of Individuals – Birds, is a grassroots initiative connecting those working on populations of individually-marked breeding birds. SPI-Birds is a metadata registry of individually-marked breeding bird studies and the people involved in these studies, and a central hub for data on individually-marked breeding birds.
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Honorary fellows of NIOO-KNAW
The Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) collaborates with many researchers in the Netherlands and abroad. The honorary fellows are a special category in this respect. From within their own institute or university, they collaborate with NIOO colleagues to strengthen the working field by sharing knowledge and ideas. Consequently, they also regularly conduct joint research at NIOO, set up new projects or publish research results together. We currently have nine talented honorary fellows.
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Research waste in ecology: urgent call for action
Only about 11 to 18 percent of ecological research reaches its full informative potential. Ignoring this problem is costly. The responsibility to solve it lies with funders, publishers, research institutions as well as with the researchers themselves.